with over 70,000 people making the annual pilgrimage to the show floor. although, why they need a rock—climbing well i'm not quite sure. and so we sent sent along our very own gaming gurus, kate russell and marc cieslak to see what everyone will be talking about this year. this e3 is a little bit different, though, since 2017 the public has been allowed in, before that this was a games industry only affair. usually, playstation and xbox hold giant computing press conferences to show off their latest software and hardware. however, playstation isn't attending e3 2019 at all... ..and that left xbox is the only big games company — with an actual piece of hardware — doing a press briefing. get ready... in typically bombastic fashion, xbox's event is big and loud. please welcome keanu reeves. keanu reeves brought some star

power to proceedings, turning on the charm. you're breathtaking! you're all breathtaking! as it was revealed, he'll be appearing in the highly anticipated cyberpunk 2077, which will be released in april next year. as well as this, we got glimpses of gears of war 5 and minecraft role—playing spinoff minecraft: dungeons. but in the battle between playstation, xbox, and nintendo for domination of the games console market, the biggest announcement wasn't a new game. xcloud is microsoft's new games streaming service, allowing xbox games to be played on a host of devices, like smartphones, by streaming the games‘ visuals from a microsoft data centre. i'm streaming a game using xcloud right now. this is actually an xbox 0ne console game that i'm playing on a mobile phone.

now, normally, of course, a mobile phone wouldn't be powerful enough to play a game like this one. the game itself actually being hosted on a console inside a server 400 miles away. the service will preview in october. there isn't any word on pricing yet, though. but while streaming movies and tv shows is fairly commonplace, big questions are being asked about this kind of technology and if games can be reliably streamed over domestic internet connections. one of the biggest comments that we've had from our readers on our site is about the performance and how fast the internet that you have at home is going to be able to support this kind of game streaming. you know, people are struggling to run 4k netflix, long youtube videos, and things like that. are you going to be able to have the internet speeds to match that performance? imagine streaming tv and movies as data travelling down a 1—way street in the direction of your television, computer, or mobile device. streaming video games is a lot more complicated.

here we have a 2—way stream. in one direction we have the graphics, that's the on screen visuals, and then in the other direction we have the inputs that the player is making to control the game they're playing. all of this has to happen incredibly quickly. if it doesn't, well, then the whole thing breaks down. despite these reservations, games developers believe that although quality might sometimes be an issue, modern home networks can handle it. those internet companies have built network data centres closer to your home to bring a lot of content already through video — netflix, youtube, et cetera — so we can rely on a much better infrastructure to bring the game. microsoft's announcement comes after tech giant google caused a stir, signalling it wanted to get into gaming. google says its new games streaming service, called stadia, could signal the end of the physical console. google‘s making bold claims about stadia

and no console required. some people are saying that the console is dead, is that true? for us, we've learned that it's always about gamers‘ choice. the industry has millions and millions of customers who look at the console experience that they have is something that is vital to their gaming experience. we're not here to try to take that away or tell somebody that the choices they've made are wrong. both microsoft and sony seem to be hedging their bets as a new more powerful playstation 5 console is already in the works and xbox has announced project scarlett, which will be capable of 8k graphics and will do away with load times due to processing grunt. and will be backwards compatible with the entire xbox library of games. and that's on the way for november next year. games streaming may well be the future, but it isn't over for the physical console just yet.

welcome to in indie zone. with understated booths and a noticeable lack of queues, this is where you will find true originality on show. you must blend seamlessly into human society. the speaking simulator is about a robot who's trying to infiltrate humanity — just by having conversations like we're having now. so players have to manipulate the mouth and the tongue to make their words come out. and you have to do it very quickly. because if you don't your face will start to explode, because you're a robot. and humans find that a little bit suspicious. my teeth are falling out. 0h! oh no! it's all gone horribly wrong. well, that's the way i end most es, to be honest. it's a place where you can sit down and talk about art. earthnight is a hand—painted dragon apocalypse, 2—d platformer, love letter to classic games like mario and sonic and old arcade games. it's a, i don't know, it's a procedurally generated nightmare, i guess. everything is trying to kill you.

but everything is really beautiful. you're so close! you are so close! yes! now you're a dragonslayer. i am a dragonslayer! do you have a painting you would like to play with? um, yeah, let's go with the scream. all right. sounds good. we have a minute and a half to try and recreate the painting. a bit of that there and, um... 0hhhh. 0r take a detour into alternative pop culture. boyfriend dungeon is a dating simulator dungeon crawler mash up. basically, your weapons turn into beautiful people and you take them out on dates to make them grow stronger. we love dating sims, but we always thought it would be really fun to kind of break it up with, like, some sort of action — and that was combat for us. and, basically, we thought a lot of dating sims were really geared towards a certain kind of audience. it was very r rated, a lot of females wearing not a lot of things. so we kind of wanted to make a game that felt like it welcomed us and we have, like, male, female, non—binary options in the game and you decide to date whoever

you want and we also have a cat if you decide you want to be single, ‘cause, you can be single and still have a fulfilling life. i appreciate that. yes! a trip to the indie zone always reminds me that gaming isn't just about consoles and big fat pcs. check out these. blinks are smart tabletop game pieces and each one knows its own game. it's like a nintendo game cartridge and it can teach all the other blinks how to play the game. i will challenge you. we are playing mortals. purple. victorious.

watchdogs legion is set in a post—brexit dystopian near—future london. had a good run there for a while. now it's all right. bombings. and people thrown in cages like animals. a bleak surveillance state where abuse of technology has led to huge unemployment, a privatised nhs and massive levels of civil unrest. it's not a particularly flattering picture of britain. before e3, i went behind the scenes at its developer ubisoft‘s studios in canada. the brexit vote happened, we were 1.5 years into development and we settled on london as a location and an important decision for us was to address it head on and say yes, this is part of our world and backstory. brexit in our game is not sort of the cause of the problems we are depicting in the game world, the causes of brexit really are the causes of the problems in our world and that is really how we address it. in the game, the player assumes the role of an anti—authoritarian hacker, recruiting a team of characters to help bring down the regime.

a large area of london has been mapped in this game and every single person that you meet in the city streets is playable. as you interact with them, a unique character, personality and backstory is filled in for them by the game's artificial intelligence. we have video games about the apocalypse, nuclear disasters, and world wars and now we have brexit which really means the rest of the world is looking at brexit as a legitimate disaster and it's quite fascinating and the fact that it's something that we should be taking seriously, it's not something that is just happening on our stage, it's in the world stage and that is particularly interesting and kind of scary. developers, along with many people who play games, regard them as a 21st—century art form which can and should deal with thought—provoking content. games are just another form of media and they are another part of our culture. we as game developers, in my opinion, not only should do this, we have a responsibility to do this, to make games speak to broader cultural

issues at large, in order to, not to educate but provide that context for people who choose to engage with games is their primary form of culture and entertainment. art, movies, literature and music all tackle difficult and challenging subject matter. 0ften it's a way of better making us understand our world and it seems the same is true for videogames. you can catch the long version if you have on over to iplayer and you will find us on social media at bbc click. have you notice what is going on behind us? desiccated cabinets. bye— bye!

hello again. part of the uk hit with a real deluge last week and all of oui’ a real deluge last week and all of our water has been rolling off the hills and filling up our rivers. this is what the seven looks like at the moment near worcester and our stretches and a number of flood warnings in force. in lancashire suffering as well. low pressure is south of island and that's feeding and with lengthy spells of rain. the what is whether the moma in northern ireland with spreading into scotland over the coming hours and then we will have this slow—moving weather front forming of her parts of wales in northern england. not move very farand in northern england. not move very far and fast because the winds are flowing parallel to the front rather than pushing it through. so it will be with us for quite amount of time. it will be a mild neck for most of us it will be a mild neck for most of us and temperatures staying in double figures. monday's whether

we'll continue to affect parts of wales in northern england. the far north is a day of sunny spells and heavy and thundershowers. the show is really look lively for the afternoon and south and east it's a dry day with bright or sunny spells. whenever we see these sun shines coming out should feel quite warm with temperatures getting up to 21 degrees in the warmest spots. the good news is we lose that area of low pressure, the bad news is that's another one that could be moving up from south to move more wet weather increase parts of england and tuesday and wednesday as well. the forecast still have showers affecting northern and western areas of scotland, and will not be too long before we start a seat thunderstorms arrive moving up from france. bright and sunny spells between these and parts of northern england with a bit more in the way of sunshine here. the met office or theissue of sunshine here. the met office or the issue that warning for thunderstorms across parts of england during tuesday and wednesday

and the amount of rain you very a lot from place to place. 15 to 50 mm of rain and given that the ground is com pletely of rain and given that the ground is completely saturated and these heavier downpours could see surface water flooding building up heavier downpours could see surface waterflooding building up quite quickly. to me at the northwest of the uk, bright or sunny spells in these and the main focus on the weather will be these thunderstorms that pose the threat of localised flooding. it should feel reasonably warm. there your weather.

this is bbc news. the headlines. the first televised debate in the race to be conservative leader and prime minister has taken place, but without boris johnson. contenders have clashed over how to deliver brexit. in the spin room in the studios of the olympic park where the debate is taking place, people give ring their reaction on the five people who did ta ke reaction on the five people who did take part. hundreds of thousands stage another protest in hong kong against proposed changes to the extradition law. the territory's chief executive apologises for the upheaval. i confess we have not been as effective as we would like to communicate with the people to

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